She Calls ‘Action!’: Lauren Wolkstein / The Strange Ones

The Strange Ones features another half-female directorial collaboration between experienced shorts-makers Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff.

The project is both Wolkstein and Radcliff’s feature-debut, and The Strange Ones tackles complex ideas surrounding youth, sexuality, morality, and identity, similar to Wolkstein’s short film “Social Butterfly” (2013), and of course the short film version of “The Strange Ones.”

Lauren Wolkstein was beginning to work on developing her short film, “Cigarette Candy” into a feature screenplay, when the opportunity to direct the short “The Strange Ones”–with a fellow Columbia alum, Christopher Radcliff–came along.

Wolkstein’s films often feature dreamlike, surreal, hallucinatory locations and situations, and this certainly holds true for the visuals and nonlinear storytelling in The Strange Ones.

Also very instrumental to the project was Wolkstein and Radcliff’s producer for The Strange Ones, Anne Carey, who Wolkstein mentions in a No Film School interview for Carey’s touch on female-driven films such as 20th Century WomenAdventureland, and Diary of a Teenage Girl.

But several of Wolkstein’s other short films have been given awards and recognition: her Columbia graduate film program thesis project “Cigarette Candy” earned her the Best Short Award at SXSW, as well as the attention of producers, collaborators, and distributers that would begin to offer her more opportunities to forge her own creative voice as a filmmaker. She has even directed a commercials for Gucci,

Lauren Wolkstein also teaches at Temple University, where she works as an assistant professor of Film and Media Arts when she is not working on her own film projects and collaborations.

The Strange Ones will be screening on Friday, July 14 with Rooftop Films at The Old American Can Factory. Buy tickets here.